Internet Tax Suggested by Microsoft Exec

One day after Microsoft announced they were investigating new vulnerabilities in their Windows operating system, one of their executives was at the RSA conference in San Francisco suggesting a tax on all Internet users as an attempt to curtail the spread of malware.

The proposal was likened to the current health plan model that is being pushed in the United States, a social model where everyone pays for the good of the whole.

Certain questions immediately come to mind, like do Linux or Mac users really want to pay tax to help cure the malware ailments that most often come as a result of vulnerabilities in the Windows? What do you think?

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The primary reason we have malware, criminal hackers and other miscreants who cost users billions of dollar each year is that Microsoft failed to design security into their operating system from the ground up. There are essentially no reports of viruses aimed at Linux or Mac users. Now Microsoft has the audacity to want all users of the Internet to pay to cover the cost of the failure of Microsoft to design secure operating systems. Also, could it be that Microsoft wants to discourage Internet usage since they have been much less successful with the Internet than Google, Apple, Sun (with Java and OpenOffice), Facebook and other Internet entrepreneurs? Now, cloud computing threatens their business model even more. Oh, how they must yearn for the days before the Internet disrupted things for them. Microsoft should be charged for the cost of improving Internet security since they bear primary responsibility for causing the problem in the first place.